Enterprise review: "The Andorian Incident".(Episode 7)

Reviewed by Richard Whettestone.

THE PREMISE: Archer and Trip force T'Pol to let them visit a nearby Vulcan monastery, but on arrival they find themselves over-run by a massive army of four Andorians who insist the Vulcans have been spying on their planets with a spy array hidden somewhere on their monastery.

Archer and gang inadvertently walk into an Andorian trap when they visit a Vulcan monastery. So how do you screw up the suspenseful mystery? You open the episode with the Andorians taking over the Vulcan monastery in the Teaser, ten minutes before Archer even arrives.

We viewers already knew something was up (because we saw the Teaser), but wouldn't it had been more entertaining if we were figuring it out along with Archer? Wouldn't it had been better if our first look at the Andorians were Archer's first look at the Andorians? Giving away the bad guy from the beginning works on Columbo, but Columbo carries it for two hours. Archer carried it for five minutes before uncovering them.

The Teaser could have been used on a self-contained segment (kind of like Archer's gravity-defying shower in the Teaser of "Unexpected". I remember the first season of "MacGyver" when they used to do that.

If at first you succeed, screw it up anyway.

Rick Berman and Brannon Braga couldn't leave well enough alone, could they? We understand the changing of the Klingons to give them bumpy foreheads. But that doesn't mean you have to completely alter the physical structure of everyone else, too.

The Andorians were just fine the way they were. But now because of stupid Producers who wanted to change it to "their way", the Andorians not only have a Michael Westmore patented bumpy-forehead (as if their blue skin and antennaes weren't enough to classify them as alien), but their antennaes and hair are completely off and pushed back to show off their new bumpy foreheads. I wouldn't be surprised if the new Andorians end up contradicting the appearance of the Andorian in Next Generation's "The Offspring".

Who's actually looking forward to seeing how B&B screw up the Gorn and Mugato?

"There is a form of quality writing that hasn't been heard from since the original Star Trek series."

The previews for this episode opened with "There is an alien race that hasn't been heard from since the original Star Trek series."

Ignoring the fact that we saw an Andorian in the Holodeck in The Next Generation's third season episode "The Offspring", the reason why there hasn't been any appearances of the Andorians on the new series is because Rick Berman and Brannon Braga have gone out of their way to ignore the original series ever existed (who was it that killed off Captain Kirk?), yet now suddenly they decide to do a prequel series that can benefit on the fact that they had chose to hide the past all throughout the Picard-Janeway time.

The fans always wanted to see these aliens appear on the new series. But that's probably why B&B never did it before. Because the fans wanted it.

There was never anything stopping B&B from taking their Holodeck-malfunction-budgets and spending them on one single Andorian or Gorn episode.

That's okay. I'll visit the next monastery.

We're going to a Vulcan monastery filled with their historical artifacts and history with absolutely no technology anywhere to be found. So let's leave behind our resident linguist who could have learned from the visit and take with us our useless mechanical Engineer instead.

Other than the writers wrote an old Vulcan transmitter into the story to give Trip something to do, there was really no reason why this couldn't have worked better if it was Archer and Hoshi Sato who were captured. Instead of Archer acting like a nut to get the chess piece through the wall's carving, better scenes could have been written in its place with the Andorians trying to interogate Hoshi with her humorously twisting the interview against them.

I'm not going to scan for the Vulcan spy array because I trust the Vulcans 100 percent.

Trip manages to make contact with the Enterprise and informs them of the Andorians searching for the Vulcan spy array. Yet not only does Trip NOT suggest Reed do a scan for it, Reed doesn't manage to come up with the idea either, even after he began whining about not picking up the Andorian ship on a scan to begin with. So much for all that mistrust against the Vulcans. And it turned out they really were spying on the Andorians anyway. These people are all stupid.

We'll do it the hard way, then.

Trip thought he saw the opening of the stone face in the Vulcan monastery from the underground tunnels. So instead of just climbing up and seeing if they could look through them, Archer goes out and goes through all this crap of getting beat up just to drop a chess piece through the hole for Trip to find.

It was reachable by Lt. Reed and his minions to set explosive charges on but not for Trip Tucker to take just a look? Archer didn't even need to risk being seen dropping an item through it. Trip could have just listened. For Archer or for the Andorians.

Because if the characters were to act in an intelligent manner, you couldn't have filled the full 42 minutes.

They were afraid of beaming in a rescue party for fear of getting detected by the four Andorians?

I remember back in "Terra Nova" when T'Pol suggested transporting in stun grenades to get the 58 colonists out. Yet this time the idea completely slips their mind. Oh well.

We're behind schedule and over budget? Just rip out the last ten script pages.

Why is every episode of Enterprise ending ten minutes before the story ends? I feel like the show is still playing on another channel while UPN airs "Special Unit 2".

Back in "Strange New World" the episode ended with a Starlog Voice-over telling us about all these great things that happened off screen after Archer met the aliens. In "Terra Nova" the episode ended with the colonists agreeing to move to another location, but never showed Archer helping them move or meeting the rest of the colonists.

And now we have this episode, which ends with Archer standing at the Vulcan spy array. We never got a close look at it. We never saw Archer's confrontation with T'Pol. We never saw Archer's confrontation with the Vulcans, or their confrontation with him. We never saw the Vulcan's confrontation with T'Pol for allowing her human shipmates to hand over the information on the Vulcan array.

We have enough technology to spy on the Andorian star system, but we can't spot an Andorian shuttle landing on our monastery (for the third time).

Nor can we detect them approaching our curtain.

Nor can we detect the phaser fight just outside our super secret door.

And for finding the Wizard, I'm going to grant your wish for a new brain. Use it to write many new Enterprise adventures.

And since you went so far to hide advanced technology behind a curtain in the gravesite of a Vulcan monastery, why not go all the way with it:

1 - Have the Vulcans pretend to be afraid to go that far deep into the old gravesite tunnels, for reasons they don't like to discuss. This would throw Archer off with the Vulcan's fear of "ghosts". This episode did air on Halloween night after all.

2 - Play up the dead bodies and stuff that Trip already found.

3 - Have the human/Andorian shoot-out interupted by the "ghosts" that attempt to scare everyone away from the curtain.

4 - Archer and gang manage to discover the "ghosts" are illusions created by the Vulcans on the other side, and they are caught when Archer and gang work together to open the door.

Through all this we could have watched T'Pol herself be confused by everything, as she herself didn't know about the spy array (why would she allow Archer to go if she knew it was there?). If you don't like this idea of mine then you'll have to settle with what you got: Archer discovers the super secret underground Vulcan spy array because a phaser misfire shot the hook that was holding up the corner of the curtain.